In this episode I bring back Mary Elaine and her husband Brett to talk about what it looks like to be a team in marriage, building your marriage tool belt, and so much more.
Mary Elaine mentions the app Love Nudge as a tool to help build intimacy – Check it out!
Call to Marriage
Transcription
Callie:
In this episode, I talk with Mary Elaine and Brett Baker about building a marriage tool belt, what that looks like for them, the common challenges that they have faced and how they’ve solved them, and so much more. This is such an awesome couple interview and I am so excited for you guys to hear it. Let’s just jump right into it.
Callie:
Hi, there. Welcome to Call to Marriage. A show about navigating life as a military spouse. I’m your host Callie, a newcomer on the scene of what is the military spouse life. The military community is a tight knit, but sometimes tight-lipped one. I hope to pull back the curtain on life as a military spouse to answer the questions that I wish someone would have answered for me, talk about my experiences I’ve gone through, or talk about the ones that I’m going through right now. I’m always learning new things about this crazy new life and invite you on this journey with me. So, sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Callie:
Hello, welcome back to Call to Marriage. We are in our series of military marriage bootcamp. I have brought back Mary Elaine and her husband to talk about the more seasoned military marriage perspective. As you guys know, last week, my husband and I celebrated one year wedding anniversary and we reflected back on what one year military marriage has looked like for us. I thought it’d be beneficial to have a more seasoned perspective come on. If you guys want to introduce yourself to everyone, let them know how long you’ve been married for, military affiliation, all that fun stuff. That would be awesome.
Brett:
Yeah, absolutely. Go, ahead babe.
Mary Elaine:
I’m Mary Elaine and my husband and I had been married for eight years now. We just had an anniversary, so I shouldn’t be so questioned for but we have been living this crazy military life together for over 10 years. 12 years, I believe. And I grew up in a military family, myself. I was a military brat. Well, we have two children, 10 and six, and we also run a business together called VA USA.
Brett:
My name is Brett Baker as you said. I spent 13 years with First Ranger Battalion here in Savannah, Georgia. I was medically retired about two years ago so we are currently kind of off the rollercoaster and out of the grind. I’m happy to share anything that could possibly be useful to others that are still in the fight.
Callie:
That’s awesome. I think with that, I would love to know, I think, on the more positive side about military marriages. What you believe in your experience has been the most rewarding part about being married, specifically being a military marriage couple?
Mary Elaine:
Well, for both of us, I think we think of ourselves as a true partnership. It’s no secret military life is very, very challenging. I feel like we went through already a lifetime of ups and downs together and that showed us really our true vulnerable sides of each other. That is something I feel very grateful for is that we have grieved a lot of losses of lives together. We’ve said goodbye to many people we love and we have spent many long nights apart missing out on important life milestones of our children’s lives together. We were both in high stress jobs. I know all of that may sound negative, but it really brought out the most beautiful parts of our marriage. Because of that, we were stripped down to our most vulnerable selves and I think that is where true intimacy is achieved.
Mary Elaine:
True intimacy, a true deep loving relationship, involves vulnerability, and you don’t know your true vulnerable self and how to be vulnerable with someone else until you go through some very challenging things together. I look back and think of that time as a huge blessing because it was able to bring out so much strength in both of us separately and together.
Brett:
I think the army lifestyle is just a massive stress test on your relationship. It won’t last forever. Everyone gets out eventually, but it will expose any weaknesses that you have. I think part of building that true partnership is really being deliberate about your marriage. If it’s not a priority and you go through the motions, it’s very easy to stay married, especially being gone and busy all the time, but not to actually grow at all. The military showed us a lot about how we don’t want to live our lives and what it looks like for us to be unhealthy together. It takes time. There is absolutely no one tool you can throw in there. But having a life that you’re truly sharing together on all aspects takes a lot of deliberate time and communication to achieve. But that’s when we found the greatest reward, I think, is knowing that I have a partner in life forever. I look back on our stressors in the military. We know that life’s not going to be that hard compared to that and we’re going to be just fine when controversy comes.
Callie:
I think you touched on something really interesting in that it’s very easy to hit a plateau and be stagnant and just sort of roll with it and to sort of accept that. I agree with you 100% that a lot of the true intimacy within marriage comes from that growth and comes from facing challenges together and stumbling a little bit and figuring it out together. Because I think marriage would be so boring if it was just the same all the time and if you didn’t grow and challenge the other person. I think that is a very important aspect that military marriage is able to present as you’re faced with a lot of challenges, usually all at the same time, but it gives you that opportunity.
Callie:
We’ve talked a lot about rewards, but I do want to touch on because I’m not naive to the fact that military marriages do bring a lot of challenges and they bring a lot of struggles. I’d love for you to touch on the challenging experiences I think military marriages can present, especially in your life, but also the tools and resources that you’ve used to help you get through those more challenging seasons.
Mary Elaine:
This one causes a pause a little bit because we can think about a million little things that were all challenges throughout the years we’ve been together. But when we both started thinking about what was kind of the big thing looming over us all the time and what we both agreed on was that he felt like for a long time, we had very separate lives. That we’re ships passing in the night and physically in different countries. I would throw myself personally into a lot of other activities and things and keep myself very busy and if he was home, he would leave that armor right outside the door. He very rarely would come in and bring those stories from work with him either because he was protecting me, because he couldn’t say anything, or because it was a choice that he made. There was this little bit of disconnect, I think that we both had. Would you agree?
Brett:
Yeah. I think it’s a pretty big disconnect at certain points and that kind of fissure can get wider, so to speak. It’s just really easy, especially when you have, say, deployments thrown in there. The person who’s not deployed takes over both roles. You become the everything. I’m just overseas, kind of like, “Hey, I’m just over here trying to get my job done and come home,” and it’s all left on her. It didn’t feel like a partnership during those periods of time. Even when we’re home, being gone a lot and coming back from training, it’s not like we weren’t getting along, but we had our own things going on that didn’t seem to kind of mesh together. I had my army life. When I was home, I was home; when I’m gone, I was gone. I was just out there doing my job. We just weren’t really synchronized in our future and in our present.
Brett:
One of the things, we can kind of talk on tools, but one of the things that really helped us was we started vision casting together. We started really sitting down and saying, “What do we want our next three to five years to look like? What goals do we want to attain together? In what direction are we really going?” That was a big influence on us kind of getting us back in the same boat together in steering in the same direction.
Mary Elaine:
I mean, even passing that vision further. What do we want to do? What does life look like for us when maybe our children are grown and out of the house? What are we working towards here? What’s the big picture for us? What do we want our relationship to be like? What experiences do we want to have together when all of this, this wild rollercoaster ride, is over? What do we want to do? Because that’s the light at the end of the tunnel. You know your life isn’t forever here.
Mary Elaine:
So, we did that. We actually wrote it out separately, then we came together and we sharee that with each other. It’s a really cool exercise. I learned a lot about things, things that may have surprised me about like he wants to do with this life, and he learned a lot about my big goals and dreams. I feel like a lot of times as the spouse, you withhold that. You don’t share the other things because maybe it’s too scary to speak them out loud. You’re afraid they’ll never happen. But it’s a gift to share that with your spouse and to have that support from them as well.
Mary Elaine:
Another tool, for me, I struggled with learning how to manage all of our finances. He was deployed, that’s all on my plate. Then, there was kind of power struggle for me, I think, when he would come back and get involved again. We really lacked communication skills and there was a lot of weird tension behind talking about money and coming together and learning how to create that budget together. I may be doing something on my own, he would do something on our own, and we’d get frustrated with each other. You have to come to the table with the same intention in mind that, “Hey, we’re on the same team here. Let’s learn these skills together. Let’s build this together. Let’s educate both of ourselves and really get rid of maybe some of this weird fears that we have or things from our parents, in our childhood history of dealing with money and overcome those together. That took us a long time to get to that place. If we ever argued, it was probably about finances. I mean, really.
Brett:
We struggled to have healthy communications about money and from what I’ve seen, this is a very common problem. It’s one of the leading causes of divorce. But the solution was right in front of us. We just didn’t execute. It’s called a budget and it’s not somebody does the budget and we kind of go by it. It is, you sit down together, you figure out exactly how much money we make, what our expenses are and what our financial goals are. Once we sat down and we broke through that barrier and we truly gave every dollar a name and we talked about it and we got on the same page, we were able to have such healthy conversations. Then, if somebody strayed and overspent or splurged, we both already had that conversation saying, this is what we’re going to stick to. It wasn’t calling out and people getting defensive. It was like, “Hey, this is what we talked about. I slipped up. We didn’t do what we were supposed to.” And we moved on. It didn’t become a real tension point.
Brett:
It’s also a great starting point for learning how to cast that vision together. Because once you figure out how much money you make, how much you can save and what you want to do with it, you can really sit down and say, “This is where I want to be in five years.” But if you don’t know exactly how much money you spend every single month, there is no way you can possibly create a financial goal. I found it’s a very simple concept, but it had such a powerful influence on our marriage. That was a really big starting point for us being really united and partners in this.
Callie:
I think too, with that, the admittance if you aren’t comfortable or aren’t strong with finances, I know going into my marriage, I knew a hundred percent I wasn’t good with money and I was very upfront about it with my husband. He was very upfront that he was very good at finances. Like you guys did, we also came together and set up a budget and figured out what we were going to do and that’s helped not only a peace of mind knowing that everything is taken care of and everything’s planned out, which decreases marital stress, I think when you’re at least at peace with some things, but also just having that understanding and that communication, like you said, is just so important to make sure that you’re doing things together. You’re on a team. You’re looking forward. You’re not holding each other back. You’re building each other into something better, something bigger.
Callie:
I love the idea of vision casting because I think in the military sometimes you don’t think that you can look out into the future when I think there’s a difference between looking at the immediate future and looking at the bigger picture. I think you can bigger picture image things in those three to five years. You don’t have to know where you’re going to be moving to. You don’t have to know if this MLS or her MLS is changing or whatever, but you can look at bigger picture. Where do you see, you guys, where do you see your team going forward in the next three to five years? Big picture.
Mary Elaine:
That’s right.
Brett:
That allows you to finally focus. Like Dave Ramsey says, “What you focus on, you win at.” If you aren’t able to really sit down and outline clear goals and things that are quantifiable that you can track, then it’s just a dream and you’re never really going to get traction that you need.
Mary Elaine:
Speaking of Dave Ramsey, that is one of our tools. We learned about the financial steps. We also read a lot from Robert Kiyosaki, two very different perspectives on money, but we went through that journey and at the same time, educating ourselves and being able to have these conversations about finance in general, that wasn’t around you and me. It was just, let’s learn about what is money, how can it work? How can we use it to work for us? How do we generate more?
Brett:
One spouse is always usually better with numbers or money, maybe both if you don’t like it, but there’s so many tools out there to educate either one. It’s fine if one person’s good with numbers. They may do all of the budgeting and making the Excel spreadsheet, but you have to come together and then make those decisions where that money is going so everyone has accountability to each other.
Callie:
A hundred percent. You guys had talked about vision casting and finances and being aware of that. I think those are really awesome tools to put in what I like to call a marriage tool belt. How would you guys describe your marriage tool belt?
Brett:
I think the first one we can hit on since vision casting and budgeting obviously are two huge ones for us, is self-development. Everyone wants to make positive influences on others and do great things. But until you focus on yourself, it’s hard to accomplish the things that you can. Mary Elaine said something earlier that I really liked. She said it’s not your spouse’s job to make you happy. It’s not their job to bring you fulfillment. They’re here to share that life with you and in being married in a healthy marriage makes everything, in my opinion, better. It amplifies all of the good. But if you’re not willing to work on yourself, then you can’t really expect your marriage to grow or your partner to grow. There needs to be some self-reflection, some self focus.
Mary Elaine:
I mean, that’s how you develop self-awareness. It’s doing that work on yourself. Really, what that forces you to do is it puts a spotlight on your message. A lot of people don’t want to do that. You want to ignore those weaknesses, focus on your strenth, and then point out the weaknesses in someone else. That will fulfill a relationship. Any relationship, marriage, friendships, families, you have to take accountability of where you’re lacking and making sure all your cups are filled.
Mary Elaine:
One of the tools is also that spiritual work for us. Our faith is very important for us. I know there’s a big difference in me and how I show up as a wife and as a mother if I’m not spending time in scripture and prayer and pouring into myself spiritually. It affects every single aspect of my life and every single relationship around me.
Mary Elaine:
Another tool that we’re both extremely passionate about is counseling. Individual counseling. The military community has a lot of resources available to where they make it free and affordable. But even if you get out, there’s lots of resources out. That has been very powerful for both of us. I think it’s important early on in the marriage to remove that stigma from both of you. Make it a very, hey, that’s just something we’re going to begin incorporating into our lives before things get really hard and rocky.
Brett:
You didn’t get that before parts great. We encourage people, whether it’s marriage or self, develop a relationship with a counselor before you need it. When someone gets a massive bout of depression and they just don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning for a week, that’s not the time where they’re going to pick up the phone and go try to build a relationship or find someone that they can talk to. =If you establish that in the beginning, then that is there for you whenever you need it. It’s a lot easier to pick up that phone to someone you’ve already sat down with than to try to find the energy to get on the computer and research and learn who it is. Let’s go ahead and establish that now. Because we focus on every other aspect of our health except mental health. It still has this stigma and it still is not a focus for people. I think years and years down the road, we’ll look back and, wow, really, that was a medieval medicine, you’re really doing that.
Callie:
Definitely.
Mary Elaine:
Then, another tool that I’m going to touch on is learning each other’s love languages. Learning your own, learning your spouse’s. There are quizzes you can take online. There are books. There’s actually The Five Love Languages for Military Couples, I think is what it’s called. We’ve been sending them out to some of our that are deployed right now. There’s also an app. I believe it’s called Love does. I’m going to look it up, but it’s really important to be able to show up to your spouse and be able to speak to their love language. Again, it’s not their job to make you happy. You need to show up to that for my spouse, knowing who they are. If both people come into that with that mentality, it will be very fruitful.
Brett:
I think people just miss right there. If my love language is different than hers, if mine is acts of service and acts of service is very low for her, I’m trying to express love in the way that I like receiving it, but it’s not computing well to her because that’s not how she receives love. You really can have big misses there in both people in their mind to be saying, “I’m trying to show my love and it’s not working.” Well, it’s because maybe they need physical affection. They don’t need you to take out the trash and sweep the floor and vice versa. It can be kind of eyeopening and it’s a great thing to fall back on.
Mary Elaine:
The app is called Love Knot.
Callie:
Love Knot. I do. That’s awesome. I’ll have to put that up and I’ll put it in the link for anybody listening if they want to check it out. But I do think what you said about the love languages, because I know we’ve had so many conversations on this podcast alone about love languages, because I do think they’re so important. I think they’re part of miscommunication in marriages in that you can be speaking two different languages and technically showing love in both languages. But if they’re not that person’s love language, they’re just viewing it as you doing something that just doesn’t resonate with them at all. Being understanding and knowing and knowledgeable of your own love language and your partner’s love language is so important for just making sure that that couple feels as if they’re being loved in the way that resonates the most with them.
Brett:
Absolutely.
Callie:
But I think those are all just phenomenal tool belt items. I’d love to kind of bring this all full circle. I normally ask the question for people that I interview and I asked Mary Elaine this when she was here the first time, but I normally ask what’s the one piece of advice you’d give younger you? The day you became a military spouse. The day you became I do. But I’d love to ask you guys a derivative of that question, which is, what advice would you give brand new military couples now that you’ve kind of been through it and you’ve had those years behind you. If you could go back to the day that you both became a married couple, what advice would you give the pair of you?
Brett:
Something we have gotten a lot better at in later years is really spending deliberate time together, away from our children, away from distraction, and date essentially. We weren’t always as good about that, especially in busier times of our life. It’s so easy for people in marriages to go months at a time and never really spend one-on-one time, especially if they have children. I think making deliberate time to spend together doing things that bring joy to both of you is such a huge starting point. It can just get overlooked in the chaos of the military lifestyle. That would be one of the big ones. The next one, I would say, that I would give to us specifically for sure, is sit down and do a Dave Ramsey full-on style budget and knock down this wall that has hindered our communication for a very, very long time. It was just so instrumental for us.
Callie:
Definitely
Mary Elaine:
My advice, and really, what I would want to get back and tell myself is this is going to be a lot of work. Most of this work is going to require you to spend some intentional time working on yourself. I think I experienced lots of disappointments. Disappointments from timelines being changed and dates being changed and plans being changed, and my life constantly being put, my desires, my dreams, being put on the back burner. That tested me a lot and forced me to focus on my own self development. Before I could expect a happy life, I had to work on my own self development, and that requires a lot of work and intentionality.
Callie:
I think those are all awesome pieces of advice, especially the being able to work on yourself and knowing that you have to develop. Because I agree with what you guys said at the beginning is that you’re constantly growing and self-developing and self growing, and that it’s crucial for you to move forward in your partnership. If you don’t grow, you’re not learning anything.
Brett:
Especially in today’s times where so much knowledge is at our fingertips. You don’t have to go to the library anymore to get information. I can stick an earphone in and I can listen to books on tape and podcasts and all kinds of things from brilliant people that are going to lay out a successful blueprint for people to take action with. Staying hungry to do so, especially when you’re in that military grind where maybe you’re stuck in a place for a year and a half, your spouse, and you can’t find work, that’s just part of the lifestyle. That doesn’t mean that you can’t focus on you and you can’t develop yourself because you absolutely have the ability to. But we have to stay hungry to learn and that for me, personally, school kind of ruined my view of educating myself. It took a long time for me to wake up and it’s like, there’s knowledge everywhere and I can choose what I want to study and how I want to apply it. It motivated me again but much later in life, unfortunately.
Callie:
No, I think that’s awesome. There’s always room to grow and there’s always room to improve and learn new things. But I just want to thank the two of you so much for coming on and being our seasoned spouse married example. And I think, especially from my perspective, this was a really fruitful conversation and there was a lot of awesome tool belt tools mentioned. I hope you, the listener, just got as much out of this as I did. Mary Elaine, and you all, I want you to just tell me where can listeners find you if they’re interested in learning more about what you guys do, especially with VA USA. Where can they find you guys?
Mary Elaine:
Our website is hirevausa.com. We are also all over social media at @hireVAUSA. My personal email is MaryElaine@hirevausa.com.
Callie:
Awesome. I will link all of that in the Instagram posts for everybody. If you want to see it, if you want to click on it later, you totally can. But again, thank you so much to our guests for coming on. If this is your first time listening to Call to Marriage, thank you so much for stopping by. If you’re listening on Apple podcasts, do not forget to like, rate, review and subscribe. It helps us out so much here at Call to Marriage. If you have a question about military spouse life or you’re just curious and want to know more, you can email us at ask.ctmpodcasts@gmail.com. Or you can email or DM me at Instagram, @calltomarriage. But again, thank you all so much for listening and I will talk to you guys in another episode. Bye.
